President Trump warmly greeted Russian President Vladimir Putin on the tarmac at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage in their first face-to-face meeting in six years.

The two men shook hands and laughed at what appeared to be a joke. They walked together before standing upon a platform with an “Alaska 2025” sign.

Both leaders ignored questions shouted by reporters as they stood to mark the historic nature of the meeting.

Mr. Trump once again is pursuing his goal of ending Mr. Putin’s war in Ukraine. Mr. Trump has insisted that there is value in meeting with Mr. Putin, who has been a pariah on the world stage since his country annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, setting the stage for a full-scale invasion in 2022.

“Probably in the first two minutes I’ll know if a deal can be made,” Mr. Trump told reporters this week.

When asked how, Mr. Trump fired back, “Because that’s what I do. I make deals.”

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The U.S. president has expressed optimism that the summit would be effective, but has also sought to temper expectations by describing it as a “feel-out meeting” to get a better sense of Russia’s demands to end the war that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides.

Mr. Trump has said that if Friday’s meeting is positive, he’ll quickly schedule a follow-up meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Mr. Putin and himself. He has expressed greater confidence that a second summit could result in a long-elusive peace deal.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin have a long history together that adds a level of intrigue to the meeting. Friday marks their seventh face-off and first since Mr. Trump returned to the White House in January.

Initially, Mr. Trump was complimentary towards his Russian counterpart and hoped their relationship could be leveraged to end the war. However, Mr. Trump has become disillusioned with Mr. Putin, accusing him of duplicity when it comes to peace talks.

The two leaders first sat down together on the sidelines of a Group of 20 summit in Germany in 2017. They would go on to meet several more times, including at an Asian leaders’ summit in Vietnam, a Helsinki summit in 2018 and another G20 meeting in Japan in 2019.

Meetings during Mr. Trump’s first term were often impacted by the ongoing special counsel probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The U.S. intelligence community concluded Russia was behind the hacking of material to damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign because it supported Mr. Trump.

SEE ALSO: Trump says he’ll ‘walk’ if Putin meeting flops

Democrats accused Mr. Trump of colluding with Mr. Putin to win the 2016 presidential election. However, Justice Department documents released last month revealed that left-wing donor George Soros sought to spread the Russian collusion hoax to demonize Mr. Trump.

• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.